Stray Dogs in Limbo: India Can’t Shelter Its Way Out of a Stray Crisis

The Supreme Court’s recent order on November 7, 2025, has stirred outrage among animal welfare groups and civic authorities alike. The court directed all States and Union Territories to remove stray dogs from the premises of educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands and depots, and railway stations, relocating them “to a designated shelter” after sterilisation and vaccination under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023. But the ruling has raised alarm for its harsh practicality. 

India simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to house its vast population of stray dogs. The Probe’s recent investigation had exposed the deplorable conditions inside Delhi’s municipal dog shelters and sterilisation centres, revealing a system stretched thin, underfunded, and deeply inhumane.

A Crisis Without Numbers — or Space

No one truly knows how many stray dogs roam India’s streets. The last official count, conducted during the 2019 Livestock Census, placed the figure at 1.53 crore. But animal welfare experts and independent studies believe the real number could be several times higher — perhaps even touching 6 crore. The census, they argue, missed large urban and peri-urban populations, where enumeration is inconsistent and often incomplete. The lack of reliable data exposes a deeper question: if the true scale of the stray dog population is this vast, where is the space — or the infrastructure — to house and care for these millions of animals?

Inside Delhi’s Shelters: A Scene of Horror

When The Probe visited the municipal dog sterilisation centre in Sector 27, Rohini, the ground told its own grim story. Dog skulls and bones lay scattered across the compound, a macabre reflection of the system’s neglect. The facility, meant to be a place of treatment and rehabilitation, stood instead as a symbol of systemic cruelty. Workers admitted to illegal captures, careless handling, and routine violations of the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023. As our investigation continued, it became clear that the Rohini centre was not an isolated case — it was merely one of several such facilities across Delhi where compassion had given way to callousness.

When The Probe spoke to Adil, a sanitation worker stationed nearby, his account was as haunting as it was matter-of-fact. He described finding the decomposed remains of a dog dumped near the compound — the stench so unbearable that he and his co-workers buried it themselves. “We could hear the dogs screaming from inside,” he told us, “but we were never allowed to go in.” The sounds, he said, came from deep within the facility — echoing cries that spoke of pain and fear. To him, it was just another day at work. To anyone listening, it was the sound of a system collapsing under its own cruelty.

When our team tried to enter the premises to verify what was happening inside, we were stopped at the gate. The staff refused entry, insisting they were under “orders” not to allow anyone — not even the media — into the compound. Their explanation was vague, their discomfort visible. The gates, they admitted, remain locked almost every day. Repeated requests to speak with the centre’s veterinarians or other officials were brushed off, and no one from the so-called “saving centre” agreed to respond. The silence was telling. For years, the Rohini facility has been dogged by allegations of abuse and neglect, yet official indifference continues to shield it from scrutiny. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Animal Welfare Board of India, even local law enforcement — all seem complicit in a conspiracy of silence that allows such horrors to persist in plain sight.

Court’s Directive: Remove and Never Return

In its ruling, the Supreme Court expressed alarm over what it called a “disturbing increase” in dog-bite incidents across India. A Bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, and N.V. Anjaria directed that stray dogs removed from educational institutions, hospitals, and other public premises must not be released back into the same localities. “We have consciously directed the non-release of such stray dogs to the same location from which they were picked up, as permitting the same would frustrate the very effect of the directions issued to liberate such institutional areas from the presence of stray dogs,” the order stated.

But the decision has been widely condemned by animal welfare groups as both impractical and deeply inhumane. Stray dogs are territorial by nature — uprooting them from their communities and confining them in overcrowded shelters is not only cruel, it is dangerous. When animals from multiple territories are forced into the same space, aggression, disease, and death often follow. Experts warn that such mass confinement could trigger violent territorial clashes and turn already neglected shelters into sites of suffering far worse than the streets.

Inside the ABC Centres: A System Failing Its Own Mission

As The Probe continued its investigation, the picture only grew bleaker. At the MCD’s Animal Birth Control (ABC) unit run in partnership with the Animal India Trust, we met Dr. Sarungbam Yaiphabi Devi, a seasoned veterinarian who has spent years working within Delhi’s sterilisation programme. What she described was a system collapsing under bureaucratic neglect and scientific indifference. The centre, she said, operates out of a space provided by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi — but the NGO itself built the infrastructure, kennels, and surgical units. The MCD delivers dogs to them for sterilisation, while the team also carries out its own pick-ups from allotted wards. Yet, despite the elaborate mandate, the programme is anything but scientific.

According to Dr. Devi, the government’s sterilisation plan lacks even the most basic understanding of how population control should work. To achieve visible results, she explained, at least 70% of dogs in any given area must be sterilised within six months — a target never remotely achieved. Instead, dogs are caught from scattered areas, operated on in small numbers, and released without any coherent tracking system. “When you sterilise 30 dogs here and 30 there, the math doesn’t work,” she said. “One female dog can give birth to ten puppies in a year. Even if half survive, the numbers multiply exponentially.” The failure to apply a scientific method, she added, has rendered years of sterilisation drives ineffective, allowing the stray population to spiral despite crores spent by municipal bodies.

The problems extend far beyond planning. The conditions under which veterinarians and their teams are expected to work are, in Dr. Devi’s words, “impossible.” She revealed that the MCD allocates only ₹1,000 per dog — an amount meant to cover the costs of capture, surgery, post-operative care, food, medicines, and staff salaries. “For one dog, we spend at least ₹600–700 just on medicines,” she said, pointing to surgical threads that cost hundreds per strip. “People expect miracles for ₹1,000, when even a private surgery costs ₹15,000–₹20,000.” The disparity is staggering — and the outcome predictable: overworked staff, underfed dogs, and a system reduced to token compliance rather than compassionate care.

When The Probe visited another ABC centre in Masoodpur, the findings echoed Dr. Devi’s account. There, Dr. Ratnesh Yadav admitted that even the most essential medical infrastructure was missing. “There’s no pathology, no blood examination facility,” he said. “If we could test a dog before surgery, we’d know whether it has an underlying condition — but we can’t.” The centre performs sterilisation surgeries daily, often with limited anesthesia and no diagnostic tools, keeping dogs for just two or three days before release. The veterinarians operate under severe constraints, forced to compromise both on safety and on the humane treatment the ABC Rules are meant to ensure.

Taken together, these revelations point to a system that has failed not just the animals, but also the very people charged with their care. What should have been a scientific, humane public health initiative has become a logistical nightmare — starved of funds, oversight, and accountability. As Delhi’s shelters fill up and the Supreme Court demands more dogs be confined, these crumbling centres stand as grim proof of how policy, without compassion or planning, can turn into cruelty.

The very centres expected to absorb and care for stray dogs are already overstretched, underfunded and operating without adequate resources. We found surgical units starved of infrastructure, kennels in deplorable condition, and NGOs carrying burdens far beyond what they were ever budgeted for. When these facilities cannot even reliably sterilise and manage the animals they currently accept, the prospect of relocating millions of strays to shelters becomes not just impractical but untenable.

The ruling by the Supreme Court of India therefore attracts serious criticism on multiple grounds:

• It assumes a massive expansion of shelter infrastructure which simply does not exist — for example, cities like Mumbai report around 90,600 stray dogs but only eight shelters to house them. 

• It departs from the scientific model of re-release post-sterilisation that the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023 had envisaged, instead mandating permanent sheltering which experts warn is logistically and ethically fraught. 

• It does not provide a feasible timeline or funds for the required land, staffing, veterinary care, daily feeding and long-term maintenance that such shelters demand, especially when current allocations are wildly insufficient.

Given these realities, one must ask: If this is the state of affairs now, how can government agencies be expected to fulfil the court’s directive responsibly and humanely? Unless this order is recalibrated with practical input from animal-welfare experts, realistic funding models, and an incremental rollout plan based on scientific population control — it risks becoming not a solution, but yet another source of cruelty and chaos.